


Your Shadow at Evening Rising to Meet You

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: 200 followers gift, Background Character Death, Background Serious Injury, Post-Malachor, Post-Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 21:50:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8302507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: “Look,” he told her, “I’m going to tell you something about these Jedi. Take it from an old expert. We can’t always help them. If we play our cards right, though, we make it so they can help themselves. You want to keep a Jedi alive, you just give him a good enough reason to help himself.”“I know that.” Her voice grated, the bone crushing exhaustion of grief.“Maybe, but you don’t know the whole of it, yet. You know how he got away, during the purge?”Shortly: “Yes, I know that, too.”“Indulge an old man, then. Let me tell you about Commander Tano."One Jedi returns from Malachor maimed. One Jedi doesn't. Hera and Rex talk. Written to fulfill this anonymous request: "Rex and Hera confide in each other. It's hard loving a Jedi. Post Malachor. Rex regrets wasting 15 years."





	

He sat with his back against a big ochre rock, the farthest beacon blipping atop it, keeping those spiders at bay. This was a good place to clean weapons. Outdoors, so it wouldn’t matter if the carbon residue got all over. Remote, so nobody would stumble across him and try to talk. Not too remote to hear if some kind of trouble started.

His six very favorite blasters lay around him in pieces. He had taken them apart, cleaned them, and oiled them three times. Now he was starting on the fourth go-round. A sergeant’s voice from his childhood barked comforting staccato instructions in memory. _CT-7567, did I hear a squeak in that trigger? Clean that mechanism until it glides, soldier. One day it’s going to save your life. Or kill you, if you don’t do the job RIGHT._

He expected them to come after him sooner or later. Sabine, probably, or Zeb, with an easy comradeship. Maybe even Ezra, who would torture words, thinking he owed some kind of explanation. He didn't expect Hera Syndulla, and he didn't want her. Send that sociopath murder droid instead. At least he could kick the droid without feeling guilty. He didn't want to talk to Hera Syndulla, who looked like a barely scabbed-over wound, herself. He didn't want her to ooze her particular brand of pragmatic sympathy all over him, and he didn't want to lash out and make her bleed. 

But he would. Because she was striding across the setting-sun plain right towards him. And because her Jedi—the weaker, the less equipped, the more uncertain—had come back. And she should have known better than to intrude and remind him. 

She stood in front of him, blocking the last rays of sunlight, and waited. Let her wait.

But she didn’t flinch, and after a moment she cocked her head to the side and said evenly, “I’m going to check on you. Then I’ll leave you alone if you want.”

“Peaches. Fit for duty, Captain.”  

“Oh, don’t feed me that. We’re all licking our wounds right now.”

He didn’t feel a wound, though—only a hollow buzzing that would fade, later, to a pain like amputation. And then he’d have to decide how hard to get. Whether to brush this one off or let it drag him into the pit after her.  

He didn’t say anything, so she continued. “I don’t think you need to be out here alone right now.”

“I’m not alone.” He indicated the mini-arsenal.

“Rex—”

“How’s Jarrus?” he changed the subject.

“He’s…okay. He’s going to be okay.” She had her arms wrapped around herself and her color was off. No he wasn’t.

“He’s alive, anyway,” Rex offered.

Her voice got all wistful. “Yes. That.” He worried for a minute that _she_ was going to start crying on _him,_ but then she squared her shoulders and set her mind to comforting him. “Ahsoka was my first real contact in the Rebellion, you know.”

“I didn’t,” he said, but he also didn’t want to hear about it right now. Ahsoka was the kid who’d gotten away, then grown so strong and so good that he didn’t have to worry about her. He didn’t need any conflicting stories tonight.  

“She helped me,” Hera continued. “Helped me form a cell, learn operating procedures. Find my people. Grow up.”

She used to be this hotheaded kid, he wanted to tell her. But it wasn’t the right time, so he said nothing. 

“Ahsoka is…” But the sage act failed her now, and she didn’t know what else to say. She was practically a kid herself, she hadn’t been fighting a hot war all that long, and behind the confidence and steadiness, Rex sometimes forgot that she wasn’t wise to this kind of grief. He’d lost… one after another after another. He loved Ahsoka Tano as fiercely as he’d loved any of them. And she was one more person out of so many.

She’s the last, whispered something in his ear, some wonky connection that had bugged him at times like this ever since they’d cut that kriffing chip out of his brain. You thought you’d die holding the line for her, some day. She’s your people. You don’t have people anymore.

Stop wallowing, he told it firmly. But it wouldn’t, so he changed the subject. Took pity on the woman before him, not quite one of his, but alive and grieving and good all the same. “Look, Hera. I’m an old man, and I’m a clone. The people I care about die, and I watch and remember them. It’s my job, until the time comes for someone to watch and remember me."

“We don’t know for certain that she’s gone,” Hera supplied, and a quick anger flashed over his skin. He’d thought better of her than this—thought she knew how to face up to guilt and grief.

“Captain, DON’T. Don’t play with me.”

She shut her mouth. No more trying to make him feel better, then. Good.

But Hera, never able to surrender, just tried a different approach. “She was at the Battle of Ryloth, wasn’t she? Somebody told me she flew with the A-wing squadrons, but I never knew if it was true. …I used to peek out and watch those fighters.”

“I’m not ready to honor her memory just yet,” Rex told her shortly. And then, because he felt bad for snapping, “Yeah. She was there with General Skywalker. She…” he cleared his throat. “She could fly like the devil, just like any of them could, but you really should have seen her on the ground, with those lightsabers.”

Hera’s eyes widened, pleased. “She had two even then? Was that common?”

“Nah, but she could do it, and that’s what really mattered to the Jedi.”

Hera waited to hear more, smile eager, and it dawned on him that she wasn’t just indulging an old man’s storytelling. She really did care about the Jedi. It wasn’t just Jarrus. She believed in them, in a way he hadn’t seen since the Clone Wars.

And he also realized that he wanted to talk about Ahsoka. He could see her so clearly still, the way she was back then. How much of this grief was really for that tough kid with her nose scrunched up, not for the regal woman she’d become? Well, here he had a rapt audience, at least. “You know, the General said she used to block with one hand and fight with the other, like she was a farmer whacking at mynocks. Used to make fun of her. Hmph. I couldn’t see any blocking, though. It all looked so fast to me.”

She grinned in sympathy. “The first time I saw Kanan use his lightsaber I thought it was a blaster, he went so fast. Right by my ear. I didn’t know what was happening. And then I didn’t know how he’d deflected… Nobody can do those things.”

“ _They_ can.”

“Yeah.”

“Hera.”

“Yes?”

“Can’t deflect a whole mountain coming down on your head.”

“No.”

“Is Jarrus going to be all right?” he asked again.

That got an almost huffy sigh from her. “I don’t know. I don’t know if any of us is going to be all right. Are _you_?”

He gave a short, bitter laugh. “That ship has flown.”

“We survive, though. That’s something.”  
  
“Some people do. Right now, it’s us.”

And that wry smile again, the one that meant she was onto the world and its tricks. “Thanks.”

“If you don’t mind my saying—” (she might mind) “—you’ve done well by Kanan. Kept him alive.”

“Hmph.” Now it was her turn for skepticism.

“Really. When I met him, he acted like a marked man. Running away from death and running towards it all at the same time. You’ve kept him going. He hasn’t died yet.”

Her laugh bordered on bitter, and the truth cut into him—Kanan was really hurt.

Kanan maimed. Ahsoka dead. (Or missing, said that buzzing voice behind his ear. No, better go with dead. Better make a realistic count.) Ezra untrained. The Jedi weren’t doing so well. 

“Look,” he told her, “I’m going to tell you something about these Jedi. Take it from an old expert. We can’t always help them. If we play our cards right, though, we make it so they can help themselves. You want to keep a Jedi alive, you just give him a good enough reason to help himself.”

“I know that.” Her voice grated, the bone crushing exhaustion of grief.

“Maybe, but you don’t know the whole of it, yet. You know how he got away, during the purge?”

Shortly: “Yes, I know that, too.”

“Indulge an old man, then. Let me tell you about Commander Tano. I thought I was going to save her before, when those chips activated and all these crazy brothers turned on her. I’d sworn loyalty and I was going to get her out of there. But then… she didn’t need me. Mowed half the squad down riding on a giant kriffing wolf. Not even kidding.” He saw Hera’s face. “You can’t make this stuff up.” That got the twist of a smile from her. “So then, I knew… I knew the best thing I could do for her was to get the kark out of her way and make sure I didn’t bungle it.”

Hera watched, waiting for meaning.

“So…I got out of her way. Did a good job of it, too. Didn’t even know she was looking for me. She looked for fifteen years.”

She frowned, a look of intense concentration. At least she had something to say, now, but she still didn’t know how she wanted to say it. “It’s…exacting, what we do. Standing next to them. We can’t be a liability, not for a minute. We have to be…better. Superpowered. And…we’re...” She considered, and finished weakly: “Not.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Twenty-six.”

She hadn’t wasted five minutes in her whole life. He wanted to tell her that she was going to feel like a failure someday, that people were going to die, people she loved more than anything, and she’d have to find a way to sit with it. But she was already sitting with pain and fear tonight, so he took pity again, instead. “Listen, you don’t have to be superpowered. You just have to be stupid.” She laughed, but he pressed on. “You know what I mean—the kind of stupid that charges into things and jumps off things and kicks out at things, and trusts that they’re going to take care of the little details like reality.”

But she didn’t look convinced. She looked heartsick. “I don’t think they can really bend reality. Look around, Rex. I don’t think reality gives two rotten jogans about whether the Jedi live or die.”

Silence hung between them. Rex wondered if Hera was like him, if they’d both be left standing in this pain-in-the-ass sunlight with everyone else gone. Yeah. She was like him. They’d both keep going, anyway.

He offered her a nine gauge scouring brush for the inside of barrels. 

She took it, flopped down next to him, and unholstered her blaster. 


End file.
